


pills or a dose of radiation

by Anonymous



Series: a feeling's not a thing you own [8]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Depression, Disordered Eating, Gen, Medication, Self-Hatred, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 20:57:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21288074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Patton has been dead for a while.Logan just wants Thomas to try to get better.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Thomas Sanders, Deceit Sanders & Thomas Sanders, Logic | Logan Sanders & Thomas Sanders, Thomas Sanders & Joan Stokes & Talyn
Series: a feeling's not a thing you own [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1453462
Comments: 7
Kudos: 44
Collections: anonymous





	pills or a dose of radiation

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings for!!! most things in the series. however, there's a concentration of discussion of disordered eating (binge-eating, to be precise), mild self-harm, body image issues that mostly focus on internalised fatphobia, and weird semi-platonic sexual tension between a guy and himself. you know. just two guys being dudes. wow i am glad that character!thomas is not actual thomas because, if i met him, i would not be able to look him in the eye
> 
> also, there's a few semi-gorey things? i don't know. also, people won't stop nodding. why is nonverbal acknowledgement of another person's statement like this? in this series, they either nod, or they gesture with a hand if the the other person made a good point that they're gonna build on and it's a group discussion. this series, however, does not include a lot of group discussions where people make good points

There’s a tugging feeling in his heart, as if someone’s tied a string around his pulmonary artery and is pulling on it. It isn’t rough, like a dog yanking at its lead, but soft. Just like how his phone will vibrate in his pocket when someone calls him, someone is calling Thomas through his heart.

He closes his eyes, though it’s not like he’d had them open for very long, and he slips into the mindscape.

* * *

Thomas does not look his best, Logan has to say. His hair has gotten longer, though only by a few millimetres, and it’s not as if those millimetres are especially noticeable. His cheeks are still rounded from the weight gained through the growing development of a disordered relationship with food, but his clothes, which Logan sees as Thomas wriggles up from under the bedsheets to sit between the pillows, are new and they fit better. His skin is pale enough that the imperfections, the freckles and spots and the bags under his eyes like bruises, stand out as clearly as black ink words on an uncoloured page.

As subconsciously as a being constructed only of thought can, Logan raises a hand to his own face, pressing down on a raised spot, sinking his fingers into his oily skin. Of course, he looks the same. He is part of Thomas, after all.

“Did you…” Thomas’s face scrunches up a little bit, in a smidgen of curiosity that makes Logan’s heart swell. “Call for me?”

Logan adjusts his glasses. “Indeed I did.”

“That felt _really_ weird,” Thomas says. “Is that what you and the others feel when I call for _you_?”

He waves his hand in a sort of wiggle. “I can’t say for certain, since each of your sides, myself included, experience our existences subjectively. Personally, being summoned by yourself and the others feels like a gentle pull in my chest.”

Thomas responds with a clicking noise and a single point. He says, “That is pretty much exactly what I felt. But why not just appear in the real world?”

“Because I wish to have a conversation with you, and it is the middle of the night. This may not have stopped any of us before, but seeing as Talyn and Joan have elected to have you sleep in their bed, I believe that it would be polite to not wake either of them up.”

“Yeah,” Thomas nods, “that makes sense.”

There’s a moment of silence where Thomas looks around Logan’s room. It doesn’t really look lived-in, since it is currently placed in Joan and Talyn’s bedroom, and it is also a mental construct. Still, every spare surface is stacked with books, both neatly displayed and messily piled, but always with some form of clear organisation.

Most of them are on the subject of psychology, rather than chemical engineering.

Thomas’s laptop, though it is downstairs in the real world, sits on the corner of the bed where Joan’s feet would be, if Joan was in the mindscape. However, since it would make even less sense for a person who is not Thomas to exist as an individual in Thomas’s mind than it does for several people – for lack of a better word – who _are_ Thomas to do so, their part of the bed is empty. So is Talyn’s, for that matter.

“Just two guys in their best friends’ bedroom,” Thomas mumbles. “Definitely not weird at all.”

“Despite my room’s appearance, it is still my room, and not Joan’s and Talyn’s.” Logan pushes his glasses up again. “Do try to keep up, Thomas.”

“You wanted to talk to me, though, right?”

Logan exhales. “Yes. That _is_ why I summoned you. I believe that I should commence speaking about what I intended to speak of, unless you wish to procrastinate upon this conversation. And, may I remind you, we both know that putting off doing things does not make them go away.”

Thomas raises a thumb. “Go ahead. Fire away.”

Right.

It’s like all of Logan’s mentally organised notecards have just been scrambled up and shuffled and scattered to the wind. Is this how Virgil feels, when he forgets to leave Thomas in Roman’s care onstage? The feeling of a lump in his throat, and all of the threads that seem to fall apart and unravel in a metaphorical tapestry of thought?

“You’ve been taking your medication,” he starts with. Thomas makes a little noise of confirmation, so Logan continues. “You’ve been taking your medication under supervision, increasing the intake slowly but steadily over the past week. Your meals have been more balanced and healthy, but you’ve been restricting your intake.”

“Well, _yeah_.” At that, Thomas gestures at his body, and the way his stomach swells over the waistband of his sweatpants. He pulls more of the duvet into his lap, like he needs to hide it from Logan, who, if it really needs reiterating, looks _pretty much identical_ to Thomas, stomach and all. “I can’t exactly go around looking like this, can I?”

Logan blinks. “Yes, you can. Your body is capable of movement, and you have not suddenly developed any allergies to the outside world.”

Thomas stares back at him with an antipathetic expression that Logan would expect to see on Roman’s face, since it hadn’t previously been a part of himself that Thomas liked to express unfiltered through himself.

“That’s not what I meant, Logan,” he groans. “I mean, I don’t think that I’m emotionally prepared to walk around in public when I look like this.”

Although Logan can clearly understand what Thomas means, it is always for the best that everyone is clear that they are on the same page. Even the slightest misunderstanding can be catastrophic, especially with fragile individuals such as Thomas. Asking a leading question can be just as bad as making an inaccurate statement in these delicate situations.

Therefore, the logical solution is to obfuscate the fact that Logan knows. It can be done with a very simple lie. A slightly blank look, a tilt of the head, and a little statement that is vague enough to be a lie of omission rather than commission.

“I don’t understand.”

Metaphorically speaking, Thomas is rather like a game of Jenga. When the wrong, or, depending on one’s perspective, _right_ block is removed, the tower falls apart. When Thomas faces the right problem or question, he, too, will metaphorically fall apart.

“I don’t want…” Thomas closes his eyes tightly. He swallows saliva down his throat, probably to rid himself of the same feeling that Logan had experienced two minutes prior. Then, he bites his lip, opens his mouth, and says, “I don’t want people to see that I’ve gained weight.”

And, well, _that_ doesn’t make sense.

“You posted a video nine days ago. Your weight has not changed since then, to my knowledge.”

Thomas tugs at his fringe, wrapping locks of his hair around his fingers. “That’s not… That was just my face. It wasn’t as obvious.”

With that statement, Logan decides that it _still_ doesn’t make sense. Thomas had filmed from his face to halfway down his torso, like always. His t-shirt had been one that he had often worn before in videos and pictures online. It had fitted rather differently the last time Thomas had worn it. A simple comparison of images would make the weight change obvious to anyone who cared to look.

Also, Logan thinks, it’s not a dramatic increase in size. Thomas has gone from needing medium-sized clothing to a large, at the most.

The unfortunate fact remains that Thomas’s issue is not on that can be solved via logic, but, rather, confidence. Ethan will be needed, since the ego is likely to be of… Little help.

* * *

Thomas does not make a noise of discontent when he awakens to the feeling of Talyn leaving the bed. He merely feels the shifting of the mattress, and the lack of warmth or a presence in the bed with him, and he lets himself feel some dreg of disappointment that he’s able to experience that.

* * *

“You have to eat, Thomas.”

Ethan blinks at Talyn, who had started saying that same sentence a second before he’d popped up. They glance back at him for a second before giving him a nod of acknowledgement.

“Seriously, though, it won’t help your lack of energy if you don’t eat enough,” they add. “C’mon, just eat a bit of toast?”

Thomas purses his lips as he bites down on the orange segment. It must be particularly acidic.

“Bread makes you fat?” Thomas muffles his voice to add to the Scott Pilgrim impression.

“That reference didn’t really have the context to be funny,” says Virgil, crouched on the countertop like a spectre.

“Agreed,” says Talyn. “Thomas, seriously. Carbohydrates. Slow energy release.”

Ethan pulls up a chair to sit next to Thomas, opposite Talyn.

“One slice of toast won’t hurt you, Thomas,” he murmurs. “You don’t need to have butter or anything on it.”

“It’s the seeded stuff. It’s, like, super healthy,” Talyn tells him.

Thomas continues to pick apart the last few segments of orange in front of him. He eats another one, then spits out the pip.

“If you refuse to, they’re going to airplane it into your mouth like a baby.” There’s a wry tone in Virgil’s voice.

Talyn shakes their head. “No I’m not! Probably.”

“I personally can’t guarantee,” Ethan smirks.

Virgil sounds a little flatter as he says, “Or they’ll force-feed you. Hold you down; won’t let you go until you feel like you’re gonna puke.”

The air suddenly becomes thick with awkward distress.

“You’d probably like that though,” he finishes. “You’re a sick bastard like that.”

Thomas pokes the final orange segment. It rocks back and forth on the table, balancing on its curved edge.

Virgil pulls his hand down his face. “God, _fuck_, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve said that. It was wrong, and kind of… A mean thing to say.”

“You’re telling me.” Thomas then speaks up from his mutter, and says, “It’s okay, Virge. I get it.”

“No, it’s…”

Virgil groans. Ethan watches, occasionally glancing at Talyn, who has moved to stand next to the shiny toaster.

“Hey, Ethan, can you just… Shut me up?” Virgil makes another stressed noise. “I’m not being helpful. I get why-”

He cuts himself off.

“I can’t,” says Ethan.

“Are we talking physically or emotionally, here? Because, like, if you can’t bring yourself to stop me talking when I’m being a dick, that might be a problem.”

Ethan doesn’t reply to Virgil. Instead, he places one hand on Thomas’s cheek, stroking it with his thumb in the way that they all know that he melts for, and, with the other hand, he places the final orange segment between Thomas’s lips.

It is eaten absently.

“You’re so good, Thomas.” Ethan feels his voice slip into a sultry, saccharine purr.

He gives a thumbs-up in Talyn’s general direction. They nod back at him, thin-lipped and wide-eyed.

“You just need to eat one more thing to take care of yourself, okay? One more thing, and then you can go grocery shopping with Joan and Talyn. That’ll be nice, won’t it?”

He keeps up his gentle murmurs as Talyn toasts the bread, and as Virgil sinks out with an awkward smile and nod.

“There won’t be any need for feeling guilty for getting hungry an hour after breakfast, because you’ll have eaten the right food to keep yourself going.”

Thomas eats the toast, too.

* * *

Through the door, he can hear Logan talking to Joan. It’s stupid stuff, like, why they’re both sleeping either side of Thomas.

It’s so that one of them will wake up if he gets out of bed. So they can stop him if he tries to kill himself in the middle of the night. What’s Talyn supposed to do if Joan stays asleep? Thomas could stop them easily. They’re half his size and they have joint connectivity problems.

If he really wanted to die, he could slip some sleeping pills into their hot chocolate or something. Or he could drown himself in the bath, while Joan and Logan wait outside.

Virgil tends to pace around whichever side of the door he ends up at, when Thomas is showering. This time, he’s with Joan and Logan.

That just leaves the two of them.

He steps into the bathtub, around the shower curtain. The spray from the water bouncing off of Thomas’s body hits him softly, like an array of blunt needles. Wouldn’t that be a strange thing to get vaccinated with?

Thomas stares at him, and he looks Thomas up and down. Fat. Ugly, hairy legs. Toes and fingers turned red in the heat of the water, matching the bleeding spot under his left nostril, and the scarlet scratches of blunted fingernails over his thighs.

He steps closer into the spray. He reaches out, ghosting his fingers up each exaggerated curve of Thomas’s side, and dragging his nails down, harsh enough to feel the vague bumps of his ribcage.

Thomas lets out a whine at the sudden pain, as if he doesn’t know that he deserves to hurt, and that he shouldn’t be so pathetic as to make a sound.

A cold sense of satisfaction, almost like pleasure, spreads from his chest, over his shoulders and down to his hips. Maybe the noise wasn’t just from pain, and Thomas really _is_ that disgusting, just like Remus always suggested, and how Roman had always denied with thoughts of soft kisses and gentle love.

There is no longer any room for tenderness. All that Thomas can do is try to feel as much as he can until he doesn’t have to feel anything anymore.

Thomas still stares at him. The shampoo has long since run out of his hair and down his loathsome body in foamy bubbles. Now, he’s just an empty vessel, feeling nothing, just like always, now. Just like Logan wants him to be. Thomas was not meant to be a robot, living from day to day, fulfilling his basic needs to simply subsist. _It’s better to burn than to fade away_, right?

Feel something. Pain; anything.

He could press himself against Thomas’s body, tight enough that they could become one chimerical creature, or for one of them to suffocate. He could kiss him with the stale taste of unbrushed teeth; lips crushed together and tongues flickering against tongues in endless pursuit of electric pleasure.

Or, he could do that, then squeeze Thomas’s hips a little, and lower himself onto his knees, leaving kisses and bites down Thomas’s body the whole while. He could make him gasp and cry out; all those noises that previous lovers had drawn from him. Thomas would throw his head back in ecstasy, and hit his head on the tiled shower walls. His skull would crack open, and he’d bleed out in the shower, with his brain matter swirling and clogging the drain, and he’d have no dignity left at all.

“Are you going do do anything, Remus, or can I get to the soap, now?” Thomas asks.

Oh. Soap. He turns around and passes the bar to Thomas.

Thomas takes it from him, nodding in what he supposes is gratitude. “I guess you’re just gonna stick around, huh?”

Well, _apparently_ he is.

He watches Thomas lather himself in soap that rinses off under the steady stream of the shower. Thomas bends and crouches and contorts himself to get every inch of stretch-marked skin. He’s disgusting. He should film his suicide right here and call it a snuff film. Destroy the last remnants of his reputation.

Thomas hands the soap back. He puts it back in the soap dish.

The shower is turned off. Before Thomas can pull the shower curtain back, he steps forwards, pinning Thomas under the dripping showerhead like an anime character.

Carefully, he leans in, closely enough to smell the salted chips on Thomas’s breath, and leaves careful butterfly kisses on the nape of his neck.

He’s going to splinter apart again, soon. He needs to leave. He needs to drag Thomas down with him, returning the favour.

He runs a wet hand through his pure brown hair and sinks out.

* * *

“You’re an idiot,” Logan hisses through his teeth, pacing around Talyn and Joan’s living room. “Thomas Sanders, you are a _fucking idiot_, so help me, God or _science_ or _whatever_.”

The aforementioned idiot, Thomas, is currently crushed between Joan and Talyn on the sofa. Or, well, he would be, if he weren’t in the mindscape.

“Yes,” says Ethan, his silky tone lacking any of the usual kindness. If arsenic had a sound, it was his voice. “You couldn’t have _possibly_ made a better, _smarter_ choice.”

“I don’t get it!” Thomas exclaims, throwing his hands up. “You know what happened last time I was on meds!”

Virgil raises a finger from where he’s gripping Thomas, as if reassuring himself that his centre still exists. “He’s got a point.”

“The citalopram did not suit our needs, but that does _not_ mean that you can just dump every medication we are prescribed down the toilet!”

A loud exhale rips through Logan’s body, like something between a sigh and a scream. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Thomas bury his face in Virgil’s chest.

“You’ve wasted the equivalent of fifty dollars on a foolish impulse, _then_ what? Tried to claw out your own heart? Through the _sternum_?” Logan throws his hands in the air. “I don’t know why I bother. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I am _your Logic_, Thomas, and I am doing my _utmost_ best to keep you from doing stupid shit like this!”

“Just saying, you’re not doing the best job right now,” intones Virgil.

Logan glares at Virgil. His eyes feel as hot as his flushed cheeks right now. “And what were _you_ doing, when this was happening?”

“Telling Thomas that throwing out the meds would just make him feel bad,” Virgil replies, dryly. “Then I said that, if he was going to self-destruct that much, then why not add _self-injurious behaviours _onto the list.”

Logan’s face tightens, and he points at Virgil with a white-knuckled, extended finger.

“I was being pretty clearly sarcastic.”

Ethan adds, “He really was.”

“Thomas.” Logan asks, “Did you know that Virgil was being sarcastic when he told you to hurt yourself?”

Thomas shrugs the shoulder that Logan can see. “I don’t know.” But, before Logan can say anything, he adds, “I wasn’t really listening to him. Like, I felt anxious, but I blanked on whatever he was telling me.”

“_Idiot_,” Logan hisses. “Idiot, idiot, _idiot_!”

“Okay, but who are we referring to, here?”

Logan can hear that Ethan is smirking, and his shoulders tense reflexively. Not only is he being _mocked_, but his whole role and purpose is being demeaned by the side with the _specific job_ to keep Thomas from hurting himself in a manner such as this.

“Thomas! Thomas is the idiot, because he can’t maintain logical thought patterns!” Logan’s voice breaks into a yell.

Ethan’s teeth get bared in a sneer. “And who’s to blame for that?”

Logan knows what Deceit is getting at, and he’s not going to fall for it. “_Not mine_!”

The next thing Ethan does is chuckle sarcastically, in that deriding way he does when things aren’t funny but he’s pretending to take amusement in them, because he _can_, just to make other Sides feel awful.

“I understand that you think it would be mine, but the plain ignorance of logical thought that Thomas is engaging in so often is _actively_ harming me! Thomas, every single time you engage in these actively harmful behaviours, I lose my connection to you, much like how your binges can cause a severance of mine and Virgil’s connection to you!” Logan tries to emphasise with his hands; anything to get his point across. “I can’t help you if you won’t let me. Please, Thomas, let me back into your decision-making process. I can help you get better.”

Thomas’s eyes are closed, and he’s curled his face further into Virgil’s hoodie.

Logan asks, worn voice quavering, “Thomas? Do you understand?”

“I hear you,” he replies.

Ethan’s voice is firmer when he speaks up, but still impossibly gentle. “Thomas, you did not answer the question. Do you understand what Logan said?”

There’s a twitch of Thomas’s head, before he says, a little more clearly than before, “I get it. I really do, Logan. I feel the connections cutting off, too.”

Logan kneels, close enough to brush against Thomas’s shin, and lowly asks, “Then why do you insist on partaking in these activities that harm you, and me, and what we can do together?”

For a while, there’s nothing but the sound of everyone breathing at different paces, for different lengths of time, and for deeper and shallower inhalations.

Joan sniffs in the real world. It’s something that they’re all aware of, distantly, on Thomas’s right side.

“Why won’t you help me improve your mental state, Thomas?” he asks. “Why won’t you let me help you to get better?”

Thomas pulls his face away from Virgil slowly, but allows the Side to keep holding him. He regards Logan with some kind of look, and, well, while Logan never really understood facial expressions, he’s only just developed an understanding of them being _unreadable_ now.

It takes a while for Thomas to lick his lips and swallow around the feeling of a lump in his throat, Logan supposes. His eyes don’t leave his centre as he waits for an answer.

Is there a clock ticking, or is the blood just pounding in his head?

“I-”

Thomas’s voice immediately cracks. He swallows again, then tries once more.

“You keep talking about _‘getting better’_, as if it is an achievable goal,” he says. His voice is shaking like the vibrato that Roman used to sing with. “But I… I don’t think it is. I don’t look forward to waking up, or getting out of bed, or watching TV shows. We all know that I haven’t in a long, _long_ while. It’s gotten to the point where I’m disappointed to wake up. I wish I could die in my sleep, so I wouldn’t have to deal with that feeling anymore. The most satisfied I’ve felt that I can remember is blacking out in Roman’s arms when I tried to kill myself.”

Logan doesn’t breathe as he watches Thomas speak.

“Sometimes, I’d look outside while taking the new meds, and I’d… The world looks so _green_,” he sighs, “and I think it’s just so beautiful. Then, five minutes later, that feeling of hope just vanishes, and it’s like the world has gone from technicolour to black-and-white.”

“Like in _Wizard of Oz_,” Virgil interjects softly.

“Exactly,” Thomas nods, then looks back at Logan.

Though it’s nonsensical, since the sensation of someone regarding oneself cannot be weighed, it feels as though Thomas has dropped a boulder onto Logan’s shoulders.

He can’t breathe. It’s crushing him.

“I don’t want to get better,” says Thomas.

* * *

It’s easy to get out of bed the next morning. He pours himself a bowl of cornflakes and scatters a little bit of brown sugar on top of them before splashing some milk over them. Once he’s done, he eats a rosy red apple, savouring the juice before it drips down his fingers.

He looks out of the window to see dark clouds, but one day, there will be a beautiful blue sky.

But, first, therapy.


End file.
